DLS-CSB H20 Colonizers

Prince Henry (Henrique) the Navigator (1394-1460) was a Portuguese royal prince, soldier, and patron of explorers. Henry sent many sailing expeditions down Africa's west coast, but did not go on them himself. Thanks to Prince Henry's patronage, Portuguese ships sailed to the Madeira Islands (Joao Goncalves Zarco, 1420), rounded Cape Bojador (Eannes, 1434), sailed to Cape Blanc (Nuno Tristao, 1441), sailed around Cap Vert (1455), and went as far as the Gambia River (Cadamosto, 1456) and Cape Palmas (Gomes, 1459-1460).

These expeditions were sent to create much-needed maps of the West African coast, to defeat the Muslims, to spread Christianity, and to establish trade routes. Prince Henry helped begin the Great Age of Discovery that lasted from the 1400's to the early 1500's.

Early Life: Prince Henry was the third son of King John I (João I) of Portugal and his English wife, Philippa of Lancaster. When he was 21, Prince Henry (with his father and brothers) attacked the Moslem port of Ceutha in north Morocco (in Africa, across the Mediterranean Sea). This successful attack in 1415 inspired Prince Henry to explore Africa, most of which was unknown to Europeans. Prince Henry was determined to see Portuguese sailors sail down the west coast of Africa to find the limits of the Muslim world (in order to defeat the Muslims), and to find the legendary Christian empire of the priest-king Prester John (who did not, in fact, exist). In 1419, his father appointed Prince Henry the governor of the province of Algarve (on Portugal's southern coast).

School of Navigation: About 1418, Prince Henry started the first school for oceanic navigation along with an astronomical observatory at Sagres, Portugal. In this school, people were trained in nagivation, map-making, and science, in order to sail down the west of Africa.

Exploring West Africa: At this time, no Europeans had sailed past the treacherous Cape Bojador and returned alive. Cape Bojador is on the coast of Africa just below latitude 27° North (off the western Sahara Desert) and had frequent, violent storms and strong currents. The Europeans called the ocean beyond that point the "Sea of Darkness." Most sailors refused to go there. Prince Henry sent 14 expeditions there over 12 years, trying to go farther than Cape Bojador. Prince Henry convinced Gil Eannes to try, and Eannes succeeded in 1434.

Gil Eannes: Gil Eannes was a Portuguese explorer who was the first European to sail beyond the dreaded Cape Bojador and return. Eannes worked in Prince Henry's household. On Eannes' first trip down the coast of Africa in 1433, he only sailed as far as the Canary Islands. In 1434, Eannes rounded Cape Bojador, and then landed on the coastal desert. He found no people there, only a few hardy plants, including "Saint Mary's roses," which he brought back to Portugal as proof of his accomplishment.

Eannes made another journey in 1435, again rounding Cape Bojador and sailing south; he sailed with Alfonso Goncalves Baldaya. About 50 leagues past the cape, they entered a large bay and saw a caravan of men and camels. Eannes named the river Rio de Ouro (meaning river of gold). Baldaya sailed farther south and collected thousands of seal skins; this was the first commercial cargo brought to Europe from that part of Africa.

Goncalves and Tristao: In 1441, Prince Henry became involved in the slave trade, when Antao Gonçalves returned from Rio de Ouro with captives. Nuno Tristao reached Cabo Blanco that same year.

*****

Timeline

Henry the Navigator - Infante Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu KG (Porto, March 4, 1394 – Sagres, November 13, 1460); pron. IPA: [ẽ'ʁik(ɨ)]), was an infante (prince) of the Portuguese House of Aviz and an important figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire, being responsible for the beginning of the European worldwide explorations. He is known in English as Prince Henry the Navigator or the Seafarer (Portuguese: o Navegador).

Prince Henry the Navigator was the third son of King John I, the founder of the Aviz dynasty, and of Philippa of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt. Henry encouraged his father to conquer Ceuta (1415), the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian peninsula, with profound consequences on Henry's worldview: Henry became aware of the profit possibilities in the Saharan trade routes that terminated there and became fascinated with Africa in general; he was most intrigued by the Christian legend of Prester John and the expansion of Portuguese trade.

1420 - As a first fruit of this work João Gonçalves Zarco, Bartolomeu Perestrelo and Tristão Vaz Teixeira rediscovered the Madeira Islands in 1420, and at Henry's instigation Portuguese settlers colonized the islands.

1427 – one of Henry's navigators discovered the Azores — probably Gonçalo Velho. Portugal soon colonized these islands in 1430.

1434 – Gil Eanes, the commander of one of Henry's expeditions, became the first European known to pass Cape Bojador in 1434. This was a breakthrough as it was considered close to the end of the world, with difficult currents that did not encourage commercial enterprise.

1441 - Using the new ship type, the expeditions then pushed onwards. Nuno Tristão and Antão Gonçalves reached Cape Blanco in 1441.

1444 - Dinis Dias soon came across the Senegal River and rounded the peninsula of Cape Vert in 1444. By this stage the explorers had passed the southern boundary of the desert, and from then on Henry had one of his wishes fulfilled: the Portuguese had circumvented the Muslim land-based trade routes across the western Sahara Desert, and slaves and gold began arriving in Portugal.

1452 - the influx of gold permitted the minting of Portugal's first gold cruzado coins. A cruzado was equal to 400 reis at the time. From 1444 to 1446, as many as forty vessels sailed from Lagos on Henry's behalf, and the first private mercantile expeditions began.

*****

Origin of country

Africa is considered by most paleoanthropologists to be the oldest inhabited territory on earth, with the human species originating from the continent. During the middle of the twentieth century, anthropologists discovered many fossils and evidence of human occupation perhaps as early as 7 million years ago. Fossil remains of several species of early apelike humans thought to have evolved into modern man, such as Australopithecus afarensis (radiometrically dated to approximately 3.9–3.0 million years BC),[9] Paranthropus boisei (c. 2.3–1.4 million BC)[10] and Homo ergaster (c. 600,000–1.9 million BC) have been discovered.[1]

The Ishango bone, dated to about 25,000 years ago, shows tallies in mathematical notation. Throughout humanity's prehistory, Africa (like all other continents) had no nation states, and was instead inhabited by groups of hunter-gatherers such as the Khoi and San.

At the end of the Ice Ages, estimated to have been around 10,500 BC, the Sahara had become a green fertile valley again, and its African populations returned from the interior and coastal highlands in Sub-Saharan Africa[However, the warming and drying climate meant that by 5000 BC the Sahara region was becoming increasingly drier. The population trekked out of the Sahara region towards the Nile Valley below the Second Cataract where they made permanent or semi-permanent settlements. A major climatic recession occurred, lessening the heavy and persistent rains in Central and Eastern Africa. Since then dry conditions have prevailed in Eastern Africa, especially in Ethiopia in the last 200 years.

The domestication of cattle in Africa precedes agriculture and seems to have existed alongside hunter-gathering cultures. It is speculated that by 6000 BC cattle were already domesticated in North Africa.[14] In the Sahara-Nile complex, people domesticated many animals including the pack ass, and a small screw horned goat which was common from Algeria to Nubia.

Agriculturally, the first cases of domestication of plants for agricultural purposes occurred in the Sahel region circa 5000 BC, when sorghum and African rice began to be cultivated. Around this time, and in the same region, the small guinea fowl became domesticated.

*****

Local Foods

Henry's brother Duarte died shortly after the Tangier expedition, leaving his six-year-old son Afonso as the King. There was a fight over the regency between Duarte's widow and Henry's brother D. Pedro that Pedro eventually won. After this disturbance, Henry returned to the Algarve and planned more voyages. There is little doubt that the success of the next few years owed much to Pedro's backing. D. Pedro had already given permission for Henry to colonize the Azores, and very soon these colonists, and those of Madeira were sending back substantial supplies of sugar and wheat to Portugal.

*****

Way of life

Prince Henry has become a legendary figure, and it is somewhat difficult to disentangle the historical facts from the heroic legends which surround him. Popular ideas about Henry are that he was a very learned and scientific man, skilled in the arts of navigation, and that he formed a school of navigation at Sagres and invented the caravel. However, these ideas are comparatively recent ones, and have no foundation in the historical records of the time

The early chroniclers of Henry's time, such as Azurara, need to be taken with a pinch of salt, since they were writing their chronicles with an aim of showing Henry in a good light as a devout and great prince (Azurara was a comendador of the Order of Christ, and was likely to be particularly biased). In the following text I have not excised all that cannot be reliably proved, but I have attempted to indicate where the legends lie, and to include some of the less palatable facts about Henry's life.